This is how conversations work, or rather how one conversation played out on twitter this morning. Tricky subject, no right answer, constructive discussion.* But perhaps most important of all, those issues are being discussed in public for a government proof of concept which hasn’t yet even been launched. It is that which is more radical and, for the long term, more valuable than the issue at hand.

Update 8 May: And then 24 hours later, the same conversation restarted. The very things which make twitter a powerful and immediate communication channel also make it hard to see what has gone before and – I have even more forcibly realised – hard to transcribe and preserve. A few more tweets added below.

http://twitter.com/memespring/statuses/66451678064418816

http://twitter.com/memespring/statuses/66814584442466304

* It is the nature of twitter discussions that there was more to it than this, but from what I could see, this was the core thread of the conversation.

Update: The following day…